A Research On The Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment Of English Argumentative Writing Ability In Senior High School

Writing could not only test students’ written language skills but also their textual knowledge and logical thinking ability.It is an important indicator of students’ overall language ability.However,traditional writing assessments focus more on the accuracy of language and only provide overall feedback on students’ writing,resulting in a lack of clear understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses.Thus,it is of great necessity to explore how to diagnose and report students’ writing ability in a finegrained way.The Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment(CDA)is a product of the combination of Cognitive psychology and Psychometrics.It assumes a relationship between the testtakers’ response to test items and their latent traits or ability attributes.After defining this kind of relationship,the CDA could diagnose test-takers’ internal knowledge structures and processing skills and provide detailed information about their cognitive strengths and weaknesses.This study reviewed the item response theory and cognitive diagnosis theory and summarized some key concepts including argumentative writing ability,cognitive attributes,etc.As argumentative writing demands a higher level of students’ thinking quality,this study conducted a cognitive diagnostic analysis of 229 argumentative essays written by Senior Grade 2 students,aiming to answer the following questions.(1)To what extent is the cognitive diagnostic assessment effective in diagnosing high school students’ English writing ability?(2)Based on the cognitive diagnostic assessment,what are the features of high school students’ English argumentative writing ability? How does the writing ability differ across different proficiency levels?(3)How to provide the CDA-based diagnostic feedback to test-takers?This study adopted both qualitative and quantitative methods.At the main stage,based on Kim’s EDD Checklist and China’s Standard English Language Ability,the Delphi method and text analysis method were adopted to construct a cognitive diagnosis checklist and a Q-matrix(based on 102 argumentative essays).Then,the Many-Facet Rasch Model and Reduced Reparameterized Unified Model(R-RUM)were used to analyze the checklist-based rating results of another 127 essays to verify the effectiveness of CDA and produce diagnostic results.Finally,individual and group diagnostic reports and suggestions were put forward.Based on the above research procedures,findings were drawn as follows:(1)Cognitive diagnostic assessment is reliable,discriminant,and accurate in diagnosing high school students’ writing ability.(2)High school students are good at using language accurately but need further effort in logical reasoning ability,text organization ability,and the ability to use diverse and advanced language.For the intermediate and advanced groups,Language complexity and Content are more challenging,while the beginner group struggles with Language complexity and Language accuracy.(3)Both individual and group diagnostic reports should be provided to students and teachers and the reports should include qualitative descriptions,such as attribute mastery probability,and quantitative charts.Based on the above findings,this study proposed the following teaching implications: 1)Teachers should enhance the training of students’ logical reasoning ability,especially the ability to provide sufficient and logical supporting ideas for arguments.2)The teaching of writing should not be limited to the language itself,but should also focus on the cultivation of discourse and genre awareness.3)Teachers should treat students’ errors strategically and encourage students to accumulate and use diverse and advanced language.4)Teachers should pay attention to different features of students’ writing ability at different proficiency levels and implement tiered instruction.5)Teachers could incorporate CDA into writing assessments and provide constructive and detailed feedback for students.